The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
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An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KMBB College, Bhubaneswar
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society along with Odia Wikipedians in Bhubaneswar organized an Odia Wikipedia workshop on November 18, 2012. It was held in KMBB College of Engineering. Odia Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia in Odia language which everyone can edit. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Odia Wikipedians gathered in the temple city of Bhubaneswar on November 18, 2012 to organize the third <a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/s/c8x">Odia Wikipedia workshop</a> in <a href="http://www.kmbb.in/">KMBB College of Engineering</a>. KMBB College of Engineering is a BPUT affiliated engineering college supported by Ama Odisha, an organization working for media, communication and development of Odia language. <a href="http://kmbb.academia.edu/DhanadaMishra">Dr. Dhanada Mishra</a>, Director-Academics, KMBB and a veteran educationalist and open source source enthusiast supported this event. Forty-five students from KMBB attended this workshop. The agenda for the two-and-a-half hour session was to educate students about open source movement, journey of Wikipedia and how to contribute to Odia Wikipedia and how it would help them. Nine active Odia Wikipedians joined to support this event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dr. Mishra began the session by introducing Odia Wikipedians to the students. He spoke about Open source movement, how the community supports various open source projects, how Wikipedia was started and how it is essential for students to take part in such activities. Subhashish Panigrahi briefly spoke about the history of Odia wikipedia, how it grew up in the recent years to its present state. Odia Wikipedian <a href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ManXiii">Manoranjan Behera</a> discussed about how everyone can contribute to the Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To explain the easiness of typing in Odia, some of the students were invited to write text on a board and test the typing tool on Odia Wikipedia. A new article about the college was created and one of the students wrote few sentences. Wikipedians explained the importance of creating user accounts and demonstrated how to search an article, how to create an article and the basics of editing an article. A Question and Answer session was held for students to put their queries. At the end of the session, contact details were shared with the students and the Facebook group (<a class="external-link" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki">https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki</a>) of Odia Wikipedia was shown so that students could continue editing and remain in touch with fellow wikipedians.</p>
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<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OdiaWikipediaworkshopKMBB1.jpg/@@images/694e75a5-4847-4145-9911-02682bd9c12e.jpeg" alt="" class="image-inline" title="" /></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Odia daily “The Sambad” <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/report-of-odia-wikipedia-workshop-in-sambad" class="external-link">covered this event</a>.</p>
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<h3 style="text-align: center; ">Presentation:</h3>
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<p><a href="http://prezi.com/ljk3w0m44w6x/copy-of-introduction-to-wikipedia/" title="Copy of Introduction to Wikipedia!">Copy of Introduction to Wikipedia!</a> on <a href="http://prezi.com">Prezi</a></p>
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<h3>Video:</h3>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-workshop-organized-in-kmbb-college-bhubaneswar</a>
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No publishersubhaHigher EducationAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2012-12-07T22:40:32ZBlog EntryFollow up to Wikipedia Introductory Session at Bharati Vidyapeeth — More Interested and More Involved Participants
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/follow-up-to-wikipedia-introductory-session-at-bharati-vidyapeeth
<b>A Wikipedia introductory session was organised at Bharati Vidyapeeth Engineering College in Delhi early this year and a follow up session was organised by CIS on November 19, 2012. About 12 to 15 participants attended the follow up session. Although most of the participants had attended the introductory session there were a few who were coming over for the first time.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many participants had already tried some wiki editing (such as correcting grammar, spellings, punctuations, etc.) after the introductory session but had several queries with respect to advance editing such as wiki markup, adding references, adding wiki interlinks and so on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The main aim to conduct a follow up session was to clear these editing doubts, provide editing support and more importantly make these new editors feel a part of the wider Wikipedia community. This session gave us a brilliant opportunity to inform and encourage the participants to be part of Wikipedia mailing lists, talk page discussions, Facebook pages, current Wikipedia projects and Wiki meet ups. Participants were taught difference between article and user talk pages, leaving messages on various talk pages, how to add wiki markups, add references, add inter wiki links, send private mails to other users, page view stats, etc. The good part of organizing a session with second time participants was that they were already familiar with the workings of Wikipedia from the introductory session. They had more intelligent queries especially around editing. In addition, another big advantage was the surety that only those participants will return who are genuinely interested in wiki editing and are not just attracted towards Wikipedia brand or swags.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Albeit being a short two-hour session, the workshop provided a good platform for getting in touch with participants, helping them to gain confidence and edit Wikipedia articles, informing them of different ways in which they could be more involved.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hopefully, next year we could revisit each of the institutions where we'd organised an introductory Wikipedia session in 2012. Though the number of participants for a follow up session might be small but it definitely guarantees more interested and more involved participants.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/follow-up-to-wikipedia-introductory-session-at-bharati-vidyapeeth'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/follow-up-to-wikipedia-introductory-session-at-bharati-vidyapeeth</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2013-10-30T09:17:31ZBlog EntryReport on Wikipedia Hackathon held in Hyderabad
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hackathon-hyderabad
<b>BITS Hyderabad had a tech fest from October 25 to 27, 2012, and wanted to conduct a technical wiki hackathon. We decided to do it on October 26 — all night.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We had a <a class="external-link" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGpCalViX1FCc0FwT1g2ZFNqN3FrNUE6MQ)">Google form</a> that people filled up with a few simple questions — and picked out 12 from the 70 that signed up. This was important since I was the only one conducting it — and I wanted to keep it to a manageable number. It was an all night event that started at 7 p.m. in the evening and was supposed to go on till 6 a.m. next morning.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Hackathon</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The hackathon started as scheduled around 7.00 p.m. As people trickled in I talked to them individually and mentally sorted them into two groups — 'people who are already programmatically competent enough to contribute code' and people who were not. A lot of people who were not selected but applied also showed up — since we had not sent rejection emails. I got them started on learning either Javascript or Python — and helped push them along. However, a good amount of time was spent with people who already had prior coding experience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most people worked on Gadgets, and a few on Python — exploring the API. We started off with basics of how to customize your Wikipedia experience with JS and CSS, building a very basic user script that changed colours / added new links. Some of the participants spent the entire night building this and others finished this in a few minutes and were on to the next project. Everyone worked at their own pace — and since there were smaller number of people I was able to (mostly) provide individual attention.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As people started working on stuff past hello world, I introduced them to IRC (#wikipedia-en and #mediawiki) and had them say 'hi' to editors. I also introduced them to a bunch of local hacker channels on IRC — and quite a few of them stayed on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A fair amount of people left at around midnight — but a 'core' group seemed to have formed that stayed on. We hacked on to the wee hours of the morning, and even took small naps. We wound up at around 6 a.m., and staggered back to the hostels (and then proceeded to have long conversations about Linux, history of programming, and graphical raytracing).</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Outcomes</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We had some students who contributed substantially including <b>Thomas Matthew, Vishwajit Kolathur, Aravind Peddapudi and Varun Chappidi</b>. Most of them have been introduced to the local hacker community via IRC, and I see reports of continuing participation — after accounting for their ongoing exams. They all are technically very competent and have expressed interest in doing Google Summer of Code this year. Among the projects did at the hackathon are:</p>
<ol>
<li>'Reading mode' gadget</li>
<li>'Reading mode' Chrome Extension that is wikipedia specific</li>
<li>Major work on a '3 hours later' type extension (a tool to produce graphs like (<a class="external-link" href="http://xkcd.com/214">http://xkcd.com/214</a>)</li>
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<p>The fact that these people went from having no experience with Wiki related programming to being able to build code for it in a few hours time makes me very happy.</p>
<h3>Learnings</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Make sure people know that 'Hack'athon has nothing to do with cracking wifi passwords or breaking into Facebook accounts. We had a 'lot' of people apply thinking that was this despite a clear description. I was told that some of the people evangelizing the event also thought the same — so clearer messaging around this was needed.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Send rejection emails. We missed this, and sent only acceptance emails. A lot of people who weren't accepted turned up and we had to figure a way to engage them.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">More organized followups. Currently all I can do is introduce them to the local hacker community and hope they 'stick'. GSoC is a good spot, but is too infrequent — and too high stakes.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Find more things for them to do. We had to actually stretch a bit to find them things to do — they were all raring to go, but we found it hard to find 'easy' bugs for them to fix that were actually useful to editors. Clearly editors have a lot of things in their mind that would make their lives better — but they are not listed anywhere public. Having a publicly available list of such things would be helpful. (There is a Gadget requests page (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts/Requests%29">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts/Requests)</a>, but it hasn't been updated in ages).</li>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Finally, I would like to thank the Centre for Internet & Society for supporting my travel for the event, Thomas from BITS for organizing most of the logistics and Ravi Chandra from the Tor community for helping provide technical mentorship.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hackathon-hyderabad'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hackathon-hyderabad</a>
</p>
No publisherYuvi PandaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-12-03T06:37:11ZBlog EntryA Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mini-hackathon-delhi
<b>Wikipedian Yuvaraj Pandian visited the CIS office in Delhi and helped the Access to Knowledge team conduct a super-ad-hoc mini-hackathon with two other volunteers, Sheel from Delhi and Harsh from Ahmedabad. The aim was to get them a kickstart in developing userscripts/gadgets, and get them to a point where the prior existing documentation makes sense to them. </b>
<p>The ad-hoc plan had three parts:</p>
<ol>
<li>The execution environment (Concept of userscripts vs gadgets, ResourceLoader)</li>
<li>The API concepts (Special:ApiSandbox, concept of 'actions' in the API)</li>
<li>Accessing the API from JS (mediawiki.api module, concept of AJAX)</li>
</ol>
<p>Here is the account of what they did, written by Yuvi:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"We covered all parts of them slowly, with both Harsh and Sheel working at things until they fully understood what they were doing and why whatever they were doing was working.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I introduced them to the environment first by having them execute code in Chrome's JS Console, and then in their own common.js. Once they understood the context in which the code was getting executed, the 'ResourceLoader default modules'<a href="#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a>documentation started making sense to them, and they could pick up other modules from there.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We then explored the API via the API Sandbox<a href="#fn2" name="fr2">[2]</a>, which is a relatively new (and not very well known) way of letting people play around with the API. It is a massive improvement over the older, non-interactive docs<a href="#fn3" name="fr3">[3]</a>, and both Harsh and Sheel were very excited about being able to discover all the things they could do with the API. A fair amount of time was spent messing around with it on different wikipedias (en, hi and gu) and reading bits of the API Documentation<a href="#fn4" name="fr4">[4]</a> to understand the concepts behind the actions - and for filling in the gaps.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Finally we had them use the API from a userscript to make calls. I went through the entire process line by line, explaining how AJAX works and how asynchronous programming works. We traced the flow of code together to understand how the seamingly nonlinear asynchronous programming model works. Then we dug into a bit of how to use the mw.loader module to make dependencies work, and why the same code that was working in the chrome js console was not working in their common.js.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It ended with them trying to port HotCat to their native language wikipedias. Harsh started to explore more about getting started with MediaWiki dev itself (rather than just gadgets), but the clone took a looooong time and we had run out of time by then. I directed him to a WMF tech open chat happening today, and hopefully that could help!</p>
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<p>[<a href="#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>].<a class="external-link" href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Default_modules">https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Default_modules</a><br />[<a href="#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>].<a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox</a><br />[<a href="#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>].<a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php</a><br />[<a href="#fr4" name="fn4">4</a>].<a class="external-link" href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page">https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mini-hackathon-delhi'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mini-hackathon-delhi</a>
</p>
No publisherYuvraj PandianAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-12-04T07:31:21ZBlog EntryGujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot
<b>This report analyses a series of meetings and workshops held in Rajkot, a city in Gujarat, India during the month of October 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I visited Gujarat for a few Wikipedia activities – including Wikipedia meets in the cities of Ahmedabad and Rajkot, interacted with students and teachers from various colleges as well as to successfully conclude the <a href="http://gu.wikipedia.org/wiki/વિકિપીડિયા:પ્રચાર-પ્રસાર">Gujarati Wikipedia article writing competition</a>.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">I visited Rajkot on October 17, 2012 with two Wikipedians – Harsh Kothari and Konarak Ratnakar, both from Ahmedabad. We were scheduled to take up a small introductory lecture on contributing to Wikipedia at Christ College, Rajkot in the afternoon and meet up with other Gujarati Wikipedians from Rajkot and Junagadh later in the day. Fortunately, I was able to connect with Rashmikant Makwana, a teacher at TGS (The Galaxy School) in Rajkot. I had first met up with him during the photo walk – Wiki takes Ahmedabad in January 2012. He had shown a great deal of interest in doing something for his school students. Thanks to Mr. Makwana's prompt response and support, we visited three branches of <a href="http://www.tges.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=77">TGES (The Galaxy Education System)</a> and had the opportunity of interacting with over 100 students from secondary and higher secondary divisions.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Interactions with TGES students</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">I got to read Mr. Makwana's email only after I reached Rajkot. He wrote that he spoke to a couple of teachers about our visit and their students were very eager to meet us as they had many questions about Wikipedia! I was pleasantly surprised because once we met these students (mostly 11<sup>th</sup> standard, English medium students) we realized they had already tried their hand at editing and even creating articles! So, they had far more advanced queries like how to verify information on Wikipedia, what is the authenticity of information there, questions on notability and so on. Next, we were taken to the <i>vadi branch </i>of the education group. These were children from fifth and sixth standards and who also had questions and better ones about stories of vandalism they had committed on Wikipedia! We told them how Wikipedia was one of the best ways of telling people about their culture, identities, city and language. Besides students, we also met teachers who taught Gujarati, History and Geography.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Interactions with Christ College students</h3>
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<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/GujaratiWikipedian.png/@@images/6d7409d5-a94e-49f6-9172-6508f80d72ba.png" title="Gujarati Wikipedian" height="208" width="156" alt="Gujarati Wikipedian" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p><i>Wikipedians giving lecture</i>.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.christcollegerajkot.edu.in/">Christ College</a> offers a variety of graduate courses. We were connected with their faculty, Mr. Rushabh, by Umesh Joshi from the Open Page publication in Rajkot.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I am thankful to both of them for their support in gathering their MBA students! Harsh Kothari, a Gujarati Wikipedian presented on how one can contribute to Gujarati Wikipedia while Konarak helped them in a live editing session. One question that everyone asked us was – WHY do people edit Wikipedia?</p>
<p>So, we called upon Jitendrasinh Chauhan, a long-term Gujarati Wikipedian. He came up and spoke to them on how he discovered Gujarati Wikipedia and has not only gained in terms of knowledge but also friendships that he has made with fellow editors across the state and overseas! We also explained the importance of learning correct ways of editing to these students who might pursue public relations as their professions.</p>
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<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Meeting Wikipedians</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">The trip to Rajkot, apart from meeting a whole bunch of new people, was also about connecting offline with Gujarati Wikipedians. Their warmth and day long support in terms of logistics, context and guidance kept us enthused. I extend my gratitude to Jitendrasinh Chauhan and his friend Harsh, both Wikipedians for their help. They have also helped us establish a dialog with Saurashtra University where we hope to plan a two-day conference centered around Gujarati language and digitization.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/GUWPvisual.png" alt="Gujarati Wikipedia Participants" class="image-inline" title="Gujarati Wikipedia Participants" /><br /><i>Given here is a network visualization infographic highlighting the key points</i>.</p>
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<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Videos</h3>
<p><b>Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ college - 1</b></p>
<p><b><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_jhc-Ymy5k4" width="300"></iframe></b></p>
<p><b>Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ College - 2</b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Jb6AF89STZU" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Write about your city on Gujarati Wikipedia </b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YJu2-gOHjaI" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/gujarati-wikipedia-education-program-rajkot</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2012-10-31T08:17:56ZBlog EntryFirst Pune Odia Wikipedia Workshop Organized!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-pune-odia-wikipedia-organized
<b>The first Pune Odia Wikipedia workshop was organized in Pune on October 27, 2012. Subhashish Panigrahi recollects his experience about the events through this report.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Recently <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org">Odia Wikipedia</a> (<a class="reference external" href="http://or.wikipedia.org">http://or.wikipedia.org</a>) crossed 3000 articles. After being dormant for 8 long years, Odia Wikipedia emerged as one of the active South Asian wikipedias. I visited Pune on October 27, 2012 to participate in an Odia Wikipedia workshop celebrating this success with the wikipedians and also attend the <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune/WikiWomenDay">WikiWomenDay 2012</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the last few months Odia Wikipedia has seen many active faces. One of them is Suratha Parhi, a very active Odia wikipedian. Suratha reached out to his friends, colleagues and existing wikipedians staying in Pune to celebrate the success with an Odia Wikipedia workshop. As it was after Durga Puja only a few Odia people in the city were there to attend. We saw a gathering of 10 people at <a class="external-link" href="http://www.pai-ils.com/">PAI International Learning Center</a> for this workshop. Abhishek Suryavanshi from <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">Wikipedia Club Pune</a> extended his support for organizing the venue for us.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Prior to the workshop I interacted with the participants to understand their interests and efficiency with Odia typing. To my surprise two of the participants were good in typing in phonetic and Inscript. Suratha took the audience through a <a class="external-link" href="http://tiny.cc/odia">presentation</a> about Odia Wikipedia explaining the history of Odia language, importance of Wikipedia, how to contribute to Wikipedia, manual of style for writing articles, dos and do nots, rules and regulations and validating articles by adding sources. After the preliminary sessions participants started asking questions about numbers of readers, how to type in Odia, use of Odia Wikipedia and various such questions. Suratha answered their questions with examples and illustrations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To demonstrate editing on Odia Wikipedia we invited one of the participants. We helped her to create her user account and others also created their user accounts on Odia Wikipedia. Then we invited Sudhir Patel, a type designer and technologist working with <a class="external-link" href="http://www.cdac.in/?id=pune">CDAC, Pune</a> to introduce Odia typing and <a class="external-link" href="https://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typing_help">how to type easily in Odia</a>. After a small hands-on training for typing, all of the participants were able to start searching for articles they wanted to edit. Some of them created new articles and some edited existing articles. At the end of the session we shared our contacts to stay in touch. We also showed them <a class="external-link" href="http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:">Chatasabha</a>, a friendly desk on Odia Wikipedia and demonstrated how they can ask questions and see the answered questions. New wikipedians will be also connected to the <a class="external-link" href="http://facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki">facebook group</a> to be updated about events and activities. New Wikipedians have decided to meet once again in November for a Odia Wikipedia meetup. Sudhir and Suratha are also planning to organize a introductory session on Odia Wikipedia during the cultural gathering organized by Odia communities.</p>
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<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/o3.png" alt="Orissa Wikipedia Participants" class="image-inline" title="Orissa Wikipedia Participants" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">Above is a picture of participants from the Orissa Wikipedia workshop held on October 27, 2012</p>
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<p>More pictures on <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Odia_Wikipedia_Workshop_Pune-1_27_October_2012">WikiCommons</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Press Coverage:</strong><br />OdishaDiary.com, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=37463">Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language</a> (October 31, 2012)</p>
<p>Videos</p>
<ul>
<li>Suratha Parhi explaining about Odia Wikipedia</li>
</ul>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ib8ULCJ4Xks" width="300"></iframe></p>
<ul>
<li>Sudhir Patel explaining about Odia Typing </li>
</ul>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1cBbYONRlKg" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-pune-odia-wikipedia-organized'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-pune-odia-wikipedia-organized</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2012-11-30T12:44:44ZBlog EntryMalayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update
<b>Three months back, I wrote a blog post (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/06/wikipedia-education-a-model-from-malayalam-wikipedia/) about the inauguration of the Wikipedia education program in Malayalam Wikipedia. This program is the first of its kind in an Indic language, and Malayalam community is doing the program in collaboration with the IT@School, a project of the Department of General Education, Government of Kerala, setup in 2001, to foster the IT education in schools. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Three months have passed since the last report in English (regular updates in Malayalam) about the program have been shared with the Malayalam wiki community during this period. Here is a brief update about this ongoing program. The <a class="external-link" href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/06/wikipedia-education-a-model-from-malayalam-wikipedia/">July report</a> was mainly about the inauguration of the project in the Government Higher Secondary School, Anchal West, Kollam, and a few details about the plans of the community regarding this project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Wikipedia education program was inaugurated by the IT@School director, Abdul Nasar Kaipanchery on July 14, 2012. After two weeks, we conducted a Malayalam Wikipedia introduction workshop for the students and teachers of Anchal West School. Almost 150 participants including students and teachers attended this workshop. After the workshop students were asked to write an article (on paper in Malayalam) about any topic related to Anchal and submit it to the education program coordinator, Sateesh R. Veliyam, a teacher in that school. Satheesh is also a Malayalam wikipedian. Students were given three weeks to submit the article on paper. Nearly 100 students submitted the articles and the project coordinator (with inputs from other Malayalam Wikipedia community members) shortlisted 34 students for the Wikipedia education program. The selection of the students for this program was based on their writing skills in Malayalam, the interest in this voluntary project, and other skills needed for this time bound Wikipedia education project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A meeting was conducted with the selected students on August 9 in the school computer lab. As Malayalam Wikipedians knew that the major roadblock for students to start wiki editing in Malayalam would be Malayalam typing (in fact this is the case with all Indic languages) we decided to teach Malayalam typing to students on a priority basis. A printout of the Malayalam Inscript layout was given to the students. The Inscript layout was selected because that is part of the syllabus in Kerala. Students were asked to practice Malayalam typing and learn it within the next two months. From that day onwards students were practising Malayalam typing at school and making a steady progress.</p>
<p>Some recent developments are listed below:</p>
<h3>September 8</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Students are back to school after the Onam vacation. The progress on their Malayalam typing is evaluated. Malayalam Wikipedians, Kannan Shanmugham and Sugeesh visited students and addressed them. They discussed the potential articles that could be created as part of this project. They also helped few students to create their user names in Malayalam Wikipedia. After addressing the students they also visited some famous people in Anchal, other places, and some organizations to collect reference books and other information related to this project. The collection of reference materials from library, personal collections, and from panchayat office is vital for this project as these are the only places from where we can get any reliable information regarding the different topics that students plan to write.</p>
<h3>October 1</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As Malayalam typing and the collection of information and reference materials were in progress we received an important book authored by Dr. P. Vinayachandran which had a lot of information about Anchal. Students who achieved a minimum level of expertise in Malayalam typing and those who had created user accounts started editing in Wikipedia. On October 1, four new articles were created by the students who had learned Malayalam typing.</p>
<h3>October 12</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Shiju Alex visited the school students to see the progress of the project, interacted with them, and welcomed them to Malayalam Wikipedia. Since all of them had acquired a minimum level of expertise in Malayalam typing, we decided to create usernames for all of them. So on that day we created accounts and user pages for all the 34 students who were included in the project.</p>
<h3>October 13</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">All the students who were part of the project reached Kollam to participate in a one-day Malayalam Wikipedia editing workshop. The program started at 10 a.m. Malayalam wikipedians Binu, Sugeesh, Kannan Shanmugham, Ajay Balachandran, Akhil, and Shiju Alex participated in this workshop. It was organized to assist students in getting started with Malayalam Wikipedia, introduce them to basic wiki editing and other related stuff. Apart from providing support for all basic needs, students were also introduced to "talk pages" and the basic policies of Wikipedia which would help them to get started with the project. We finished this one-day workshop at 3.30 p.m. by taking a group photo. A detailed report (in Malayalam) regarding this one day workshop can be read from <a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE/%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8B%E0%B5%BC%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D">here</a>.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/Itschoolmal_wiki10.JPG/image_preview" alt="Students attending Malayalam wikipedia workshop" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Students attending Malayalam wikipedia workshop" /><br />Students doing Malayalam wiki editing</p>
<h3>October 14</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Malayalam Wikipedians Sateesh, Sugeesh, Shiju, and our new wikipedian Anathu P. Sankar visited the Rehabilitation Plantation Limited [RPL] which is an important institution near Anchal and is one of the article being developed as part of this project. We met a few key people who provided some references about RPL. It was decided that students who were working on the articles related to RPL will visit again to collect more information about the project.</p>
<p>As of today some of the important progress the main progress made on the project are is listed below:</p>
<ul>
<li>All students have created their accounts.</li>
<li>All students have created their user pages.</li>
<li>Most students created or edited articles that they were planning to contribute.</li>
<li>Students with the help of their teacher, Satheesh continue collecting reference materials on topics they plan to write.</li>
<li>Students continue editing in Malayalam whenever they get access to computer and internet.</li></ul>
<p>Some of the things that need to be kept in mind regarding this project are:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The project is done entirely on a voluntary basis. No separate time is allocated for students to participate in this project.</li>
<li>Thirty-four students are part of this and most of them are from ninth standard.</li>
<li>Out of the 34 students, 7 are girl students.</li>
<li>Out of 34 students only 10 students have got computers at home.</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Kerala schools are using free software for computers. They use a customized version of Ubuntu in computer labs. It is easy to configure Malayalam typing in that. Technically all 34 students need to depend on the five computers available (computers with internet facility) in the school computer lab to practice Malayalam typing, wiki editing, and do the other tasks related to the project. And the lack of regular access to computer and internet is affecting the smooth progress of the project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As separate time is not allocated for this project, students who are
part of this project are working on it either during intervals, lunch
time, during early hours before the start of the school, or by staying
late after the school working hours. Since we have only around five
computers with internet in the school lab, students need to divide and
share the timing among themselves. Many of them come to the school on
Saturdays and Sundays to participate in the project.</p>
<p>Few important links related to this project:</p>
<ul>
<li>The master project page of this program is available<a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE"> here</a>.</li></ul>
<ul>
<li>The list of students participating in this program is available <a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B5%BC%E0%B4%A4%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%BE">here</a></li>
<li>The list of articles that students started or enhancing as past of this project is available <a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE/%E0%B4%B2%E0%B5%87%E0%B4%96%E0%B4%A8%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%99%E0%B5%BE">here</a></li>
<li>The progress report of the project in Malayalam is regularly updated <a class="external-link" href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%AD%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AF%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8_%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%85%E0%B4%9E%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9A%E0%B5%BD_%E0%B4%B5%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B5%8D_%E0%B4%97%E0%B4%B5._%E0%B4%B9%E0%B4%AF%E0%B5%BC_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%86%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%A8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF_%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%82%E0%B5%BE/%E0%B4%B1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8B%E0%B5%BC%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%9F%E0%B5%8D">here</a></li></ul>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>We will keep you posted about the updates from this project as and when it happens. Malayalam community is planning to complete this project (student editing) by the third or fourth week of November</em>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/malayalam-wikipedia-education-program-august-october-update</a>
</p>
No publishershijuAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-11-09T18:18:20ZBlog EntryBridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success!
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-women-day-2012-pune
<b>A2K team members Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval participated in the "WikiWomenDay" organized by Wikipedia Club Pune at PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus on October 28, 2012. Subhashish unfolds the happenings of this full day free fun workshop.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Globally participation of women on Wikipedia is less than 10 per cent. Women wikipedians across the world have joined hands to boost women's contribution to Wikipedia. Recently the A2K team was in Pune for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune/WikiWomenDay">WikiWomenDay 2012</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">Wikipedia Club Pune</a>, the first Wikipedia club in India, to encourage women's participation on Wikipedia, had organized a full day fun event on October 28, 2012 at <a href="http://www.pai-ils.com/">PAI International Learning Solutions</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Abhishek Suryavanshi, founder of Wikipedia Club Pune briefed about the agenda of the event. Noopur spoke about the global contribution on Wikipedia in terms of various topics and how male-centered topics were well covered. Few of the male centric articles were taken up for comparison with those of women to make the audience understand the gap of contribution. A good majority of articles which were of interest to men were well written whereas women centric articles were of bad shape due to lack of contribution from women. A visual <a href="http://visual.ly/wikipedias-gender-gap">representation</a> was shown to the participants to explain the statistical information about gender gap on Wikipedia. Apart from article contribution, male editors were found to be more social and discussed more on talk pages which also bring more male editors on Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants were introduced to the basics of Wikipedia editing (five pillars, notability, importance of source of references, vandalism) before they were explained about actual editing. Each of the participants were provided with a computer and one of them was invited to create her user account.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
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<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p>Thereafter Abhishek demonstrated searching an article on Wikipedia and how logging in to Wikipedia allows editors to edit articles which are protected from editing by anyone. One of the logged in editors was asked to make a small edit on an article which surprised many of the participants. They realized that even they can make changes to the articles, for the first time in their life. Then there was a buzz about the credibility of the articles as they all saw that anyone can edit the articles. So the Wikipedia article on Pune was vandalized and Pune was made the capital of India for a few minutes! The page was refreshed after a while and reverted. This was clear enough to demonstrate how active the editor community is on Wikipedia.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center; ">
<p style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/WikiLearning.png" alt="Wiki Learning" class="image-inline" title="Wiki Learning" /></p>
Abhishek Suryavanshi demonstrates wiki editing on WikiWomenDay 2012</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most of the errors and typos get corrected quickly as someone or the other notices that there is a mistake and correct it. However, there are many articles, especially articles of Indian context which still have wrong information because the number of Indian editors are less. A series of editing for various favourite articles chosen by new wikipedians opened up the window for them to understand how important their participation could be. Abhishek, Nikita, Noopur and Subhashish helped the editors with editing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After engaging the editors for quite sometime with editing there was a fun quiz session to brush up what was taught. The participants were asked questions based on the previous session.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Winners of the quiz were awarded with Wikipedia stickers and badges.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/WP.png" alt="Pune Wikipedia Session" class="image-inline" title="Pune Wikipedia Session" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">A picture of participants learning wiki editing on WikiWomenDay 2012 in Pune</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the participants left after the lunch break. Those who came back then gathered for a Indian language Wikipedia session. Out of the whole audience there were Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Odia speakers. They all were showed their respective language wikipedias. A demonstration was given to show the typing tool. As the editors were completely new to the Indian language typing, some of them started typing using default <a href="http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Narayam">Narayam</a> transliteration tool and some took the help of <a href="http://www.bhashaindia.com/ilit">Microsoft ILIT</a> and <a href="http://www.google.co.in/transliterate">Google Transliterate</a> as well. During this session new wikipedians edited many articles on <a href="http://mr.wikipedia.org/">Marathi</a>, <a href="http://hi.wikipedia.org/">Hindi</a> and <a href="http://bn.wikipedia.org/">Bengali</a> Wikiepdia. After the whole day session there was still some time left for acclaim and fun. The participants were awarded with participation and contribution certificate by the Wikipedia Club Pune. All the new wikipedians registered on Wikipedia Club Pune.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was a special announcement for Wikipedia Summit India, Anniversary Celebration of Wikipedia Club Pune. Club members celebrated with cutting a special Wikipedia cake. Rishi Aacharya and Ketaki Pole from PAI International Learning Solutions extended their support for this event.</p>
<h3>Meeting with Wikipedia Club Pune members</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was a meeting with some of the Wikipedia Club Pune members on October 27, 2012 at PAI International Learning Solutions. It was attended by Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. Abhishek Suryavanshi, founder of the club brought a proposal about the Wikipedia India Summit, anniversary celebration of Wikipedia Club Pune which is planned in the first quarter of 2013. Importance of a India level summit, plans and agenda, logistics and partnership and sponsorship options were discussed during this meeting. There will be public announcement regarding this summit.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-women-day-2012-pune'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-women-day-2012-pune</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopOpenness2012-11-10T08:30:09ZBlog EntryA Workshop on "Exploring the Internals of Mobile Technologies"
https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/workshop-exploring-the-internals-of-mobile-technologies-1
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society invites all individuals interested in investigating and exploring the internal of the Mobile/Hardware Technologies and understanding of capabilities of mobile phones to join our workshop on Saturday, October 27, 2012, at the TERI Southern Regional Centre.</b>
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<h3><b><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Objective:</b></h3>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify; ">Bringing together the technical/hacker community and individuals interested in mobile devices to explore mobile devices internals and capabilities</p>
<h3>Scope of Conference and Workshop:</h3>
<div>Our proposed topics/areas which we hope to have discussions on are:</div>
<ul>
<li>Hardware Hacking (Board/Chips Capabilities)</li>
<li>Operating System Internals (Hardware/OS Interfacing)</li>
<li>Software Development Kit (MRE, etc.)</li>
<li>Forensic Analysis</li>
<li>Understanding of Mobile as Telecommunication Device (2G/3G, etc.)</li>
<li>Understanding Mobile/Devices Internals</li>
<li>Working with JTAG/UART Ports</li>
<li>Porting Open Softwares on Mobiles/Hardwares</li>
</ul>
<h3>Expected outcomes:</h3>
<ol>
<li>Understanding of mobile devices internals and capabilities</li>
<li>Documenting mobile devices capabilities and internals</li>
<li>Publishing of blogs on knowledge generated</li>
<li>Exploration/Speculation on research/development avenues</li>
</ol>
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<h3><b>Agenda </b></h3>
<table class="vertical listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: left; "><b>I. Core Talks</b></th>
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<td>Tea/Coffee: <br />Time: 9:00 - 9:30 a.m.<br /></td>
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<td>
<p class="normal"><b>1. Arduino Board Capabilities and Playing Around It!</b><br />Objective: Understanding Arduino board capabilities and playing with it<br />Speaker: Sudar Muthu<br />Level: Introduction<br />Duration: 1 Hour<br />Time: 9:30 - 10:30 a.m.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>2. Initiatives@CIS<br /></b>
<p class="normal">Objective: Discussing the research initiative that has led CIS to become interested in mobile device internals and capabilities<br />Speaker: Jadine Lannon<br />Level: Introduction<br />Duration: 10-15 Minutes<br />Time: 10:30 - 10:45 a.m.</p>
</td>
</tr>
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<td><b>3. Mobile Hacking Through Linux Drivers<br /></b>
<p class="normal">Objective: Understanding the Linux kernel & driver internals from the perspective of reverse engineering<br />Speaker: Anil Kumar Pugalia<br />Level: Intermediate to Advanced<br />Duration: 1 Hour<br />Time: 10:45 - 11:45 a.m.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>4. Hardware Hacking (Board/Chips Capabilities)<br /></b>
<p class="normal">Objective: Discuss and explore key areas of mobile hardware<br />(power, clock, pin multiplexing, peripherals, etc.)<br />Speaker: Khasim Syed Mohammed<br />Level: Introductory to Advanced<br />Duration: 1 Hour<br />Time: 11:45 - 12:45 p.m.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lunch Time<br />Time: 12:45 - 1:30 p.m.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>5. Porting Open Software on Hardware</b><br />Objective:<br />Cover porting examples for each type of peripherals<br />Cover Android and Linux bringup as an example<br />Speaker: Khasim Syed Mohammed<br />Level: Intermediate to Advance<br /> Duration: 2 Hours<br />Time: 1:30 - 3:30 p.m.</td>
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<th style="text-align: left; "><b>II.</b><b>Community Knowledge Sharing/Hacking! </b><br /></th>
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<td>Time: 3.30 to 5.30 p.m.</td>
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<td>
<p class="normal"><b>5. Free Slot</b></p>
</td>
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<td>
<p class="normal"><b>6. Free Slot</b></p>
</td>
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<td>Tea/Coffee Time</td>
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<td><b>7. Free Slot</b></td>
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<td><b>8. Free Slot</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></p>
<p class="normal" style="text-align: justify; "><i>We are inviting community members to take up <b>Free Slots </b>to share their knowledge in this section. In this section, any person can propose a talk, workshop, or speculation about any device for a duration 30 minutes to 1 hour, as long as the topic falls within broader scope of the focus areas described at the in the “Scope of the Conference and Workshop” section of the workshop objectives.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Venue, Dates and Logistics</b></p>
<p>The event will take place on Saturday, October 27, 2012, at the following address:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6882451646961272" style="text-align: start; "> </span></p>
<p>TERI Southern Regional Centre<br />4th Main, Domlur II Stage <br />Bangalore - 560 071 <br />Karnataka</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="normal" style="text-align: justify; ">The event will be begin at 9 a.m. on Saturday and end in the evening around 5 p.m. Lunch and snacks will be provided by CIS.</p>
<p class="normal" style="text-align: justify; "><b>Available Resources:<br /></b>CIS has purchased 12 gray-market mobile phones with the intent to document as much information about the life-cycles, hardware, software and content of each phone as possible. We request that the producers, make and model of each device be kept anonymous in discussions/publications that take place outside of the workshop.</p>
<hr />
<h3 class="normal" style="text-align: justify; ">The Speakers</h3>
<p class="normal" style="text-align: justify; "><b>1. Anil Kumar Pugalia</b><br />The author is a freelance trainer in Linux internals, Linux device drivers, embedded Linux & related topics. Prior to this, he was at Intel and Nvidia. He has been working with Linux since 1994. A gold medallist from IISc, Linux & knowledge sharing are two of his many passions. Creating and playing with open source hardware is one of his hobbies, which he materializes through his company eSrijan, which can be accessed at:<a href="http://profession.sarika-pugs.com/"><br />Website: </a><a href="http://profession.sarika-pugs.com/">http://profession.sarika-pugs.com/</a></p>
<p class="normal" style="text-align: justify; "><b> 2. Jadine Lannon</b><br />Jadine is a research intern at the Centre for Internet and Society. She is currently working on the “Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace” research project. More information on the research project can be found here: <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/pervasive-technologies-access-to-knowledge-in-the-market-place">http://cis-india.org/a2k/pervasive-technologies-access-to-knowledge-in-the-market-place</a></p>
<p class="normal" style="text-align: justify; "><b>3. Khasim Syed Mohammed</b><br />Khasim leads Open Hardware and Software Initiatives at Texas Instruments. Blog: <a href="http://www.khasim.in/">http://www.khasim.in/</a>; <a href="http://khasim.blogspot.in/">http://khasim.blogspot.in/</a></p>
<p class="normal" style="text-align: justify; "><b>4. Sudar Muthu</b><br />Sudar does open hardware as hobby; Arudino is his playground. He is passionate about programming (particularly web-based) and loves to design and build web sites/services from scratch. AJAX, Web2.0, Semantic Web, Comet, RDF or any of those latest buzz-field jargons.</p>
<p class="normal">Blog: <a href="http://sudarmuthu.com/">http://SudarMuthu.com</a>; <a href="http://hardwarefun.com/">http://hardwarefun.com</a>; <b> </b></p>
<p class="normal"><b>Supporting Communities:</b></p>
<ul>
<li>NULL: <a href="http://null.co.in/">http://null.co.in/</a></li>
<li>SecurityXploaded: <a href="http://securityxploded.com/">http://securityxploded.com/</a></li>
<li>Computer Club India: <a href="http://computerclub.in/Main_Page">http://computerclub.in/Main_Page</a></li>
</ul>
<p class="normal"><b><br /></b></p>
<p class="normal"><b>Register at:</b><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dG1UcHBYR2xRLWhPZ0QwVWlaaEg0SXc6MQ"> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dG1UcHBYR2xRLWhPZ0QwVWlaaEg0SXc6MQ</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/workshop-exploring-the-internals-of-mobile-technologies-1'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/workshop-exploring-the-internals-of-mobile-technologies-1</a>
</p>
No publisherjdineEvent TypeWorkshopAccess to Knowledge2012-10-25T06:52:50ZEventLaunch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/launch-of-assamese-wikipedia-education-program
<b>The Assamese Wikipedia community has shown a rapid growth in the past six months from 20 active editors in January 2012 to 29 active editors in June 2012. The absolute numbers might seem low but in terms of percentages its an overwhelming increment of 45 per cent.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This increment can partly be credited to the photography and article contest, conducting workshops at various educational institutions and organic community growth.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Though Assamese Wikipedia is still a small project with about 1600 articles, the Assamese Wikipedians have the drive, willingness and zest to get more editors and multiply their community. Their enthusiasm and determination has led them to start with an Assamese Wikipedia Education Program. The program was launched on October 14, 2012 with 15 masters students (90 per cent of these are women students) under the guidance of Prof. Dulumoni Goswami, Head of the Department of Education, <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guwahati_University">Guwahati University</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The day before the launch some of the Assamese Wikipedia editors including Jyoti and Durbhajyoti met to design and alter the Wikipedia Education Program for Assamese Wikipedia. It was decided that the entire program will be divided in four different stages which are as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Stage 1: Introduction to Wikipedia + Introduction to Education Program + Assamese typing</li>
<li>Stage 2: Editing Assamese Wikipedia</li>
<li>Stage 3: Advanced editing including adding references, headers, TOC and wiki markups</li>
<li>Stage 4: Concluding the Education Program</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In accordance with each of these stages there will be set of deliverables expected out of the students which are as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Deliverable 1: Create Wikipedia user accounts and user pages</li>
<li>Deliverable 2: Submit a two-page typed article in Assamese</li>
<li>Deliverable 3: Students will select one article each and start editing their articles</li>
<li>Deliverable 4: Students will continue enhancing their articles and will start adding references, wiki markups and pictures, if desired.</li>
</ul>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
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<td>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Assam1.jpg/@@images/e24483a8-26fa-40d2-b814-2b3769562139.jpeg" alt="Assam Wikipedia Workshop 1" class="image-inline" title="Assam Wikipedia Workshop 1" /></p>
<p>Assamese Wikipedia Education Program initiated in Guwahati University</p>
</td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">On Oct 14, 2012 at 11 a.m., the program was initiated with an introduction about Assamese Wikipedia and Wikipedia Education Program. Students were completely thrilled with the idea of them contributing to Wikipedia articles and created their usernames during the session. Since students were not familiar with Assamese typing a larger part of the session was dedicated to teach students on how to type in Assamese using Rudali. As a deliverable, students will be submitting two-page article typed in Assamese on paper before the first week of November. Thereafter, a second in-class session will be organized where students will be taught editing Assamese Wikipedia.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
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<td>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Assam2.jpg/@@images/531afaa1-f266-4bab-805d-280bfa654302.jpeg" alt="Assam Wikipedia 2" class="image-inline" title="Assam Wikipedia 2" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">Students learn Assamese typing using typing tool Rudali.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All the students have willingly enrolled themselves in the program and have not been forced by the faculty members. Indeed, three students were not studying in Guwahati University but still wanted to be a part of the Assamese Education Program. A loud cheer and good wishes to the Assamese Wikipedia community!</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Video</b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Gn2cJStjQSM" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/launch-of-assamese-wikipedia-education-program'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/launch-of-assamese-wikipedia-education-program</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2013-07-26T11:43:37ZBlog EntryWikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-ghaziabad
<b>The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet & Society was approached by Gaurav Prashar, Assistant Dean at Inmantec College, Ghaziabad to organize a Wikipedia workshop. Accordingly, a workshop was organized on October 17, 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It was quite overwhelming to see the amount of effort the institution had put in to organize this event. It took place in a large auditorium which was well equipped with all modern facilities like projector, internet, good sound system, each student had a laptop with access to stable internet connection.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over 120 participants attended the workshop including MCA, BCA, BBA students and faculty members. The workshop included a brief introduction about - what is Wikipedia, who edits Wikipedia, why do they edit Wikipedia, how can one contribute to Wikipedia articles. The presentation was followed by a hands on editing training session where some participants created usernames and tried minor editing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">During the session participants also created a new article, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmantec" target="_blank">Inmantec</a>, and have taken it as a challenge to edit and improve this article over the period of next one month.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
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<td>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/W1.png/@@images/6a6632cb-31a7-4770-ad54-1114320a449c.png" alt="workshop ghaziabad1" class="image-inline" title="workshop ghaziabad1" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants listening to the proceedings at the Wikipedia workshop</p>
</td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p><br />The session was highly interactive and students asked a lot of queries regarding other projects supported by Wikimedia Foundation, when and who started Wikipedia, the demographics of existing Wikipedia editors, edit wars, collaborative editing, how they can participate in other activities organized by the A2K team and more.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the session many students showed interest to organize a follow up workshop where they could get to know about Wikipedia Clubs and how they could initiate one at Inmantec college.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Overall, the workshop was a huge success. The A2K team will be in regular touch with the participants through mail and Facebook to provide editing support. The participants will also be sent regular invites about Wikipedia events organised in NCR. The follow up session might be organized sometime in the month of November. Please watch out for more updates.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
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<td>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/W2.png/@@images/c4fecf43-4bc7-44cb-ac49-f96ef8e1e54f.png" alt="w2" class="image-inline" title="w2" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; ">Presentation being given during Wikipedia workshop held in Ghaziabad</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<p><b>Video</b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="141" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lOqLqPE-MrE" width="300"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-ghaziabad'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-workshop-ghaziabad</a>
</p>
No publishernitikaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaWorkshopVideoOpenness2013-01-07T16:30:36ZBlog EntryNational IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/national-ig-mechanisms
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society is coorganizing this workshop along with Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, et.al., at the seventh Internet Governance Forum 2012 in Azerbaijan. The workshop will be held in Conference Room 4, from 2.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m. Pranesh Prakash is a panelist for this workshop.
</b>
<p><b>Workshop Theme: </b><br />Other <br /><b>Theme Question: </b><br />It is a workshop on national level IG mechanisms, and does not directly address any main theme questions</p>
<h3>Concise Description of Workshop:</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Such is the unique nature of the Internet that its governance often calls for institutional innovations. The proposed workshop will look at a range of national level IG mechanisms across the world. While the discussion will refer to good models and practices in different countries, it will not be organized around simple show-casing of different national IG mechanisms. The discussion will centre around key contexts, requirements, challenges and possibilities. It will be directed towards examining key institutional design issues, functions and outcomes with regard to national level IG mechanisms with the purpose to help countries make appropriate decisions in their specific contexts. Some of these are; - How should the national commons of Internet resources be managed?- What kinds of mechanisms are appropriate for technical matters, what for those that are partly technical and partly social, and what for larger public policy matters, requiring more political responses? - Should there be a common single mechanism to address all the above kinds of issues, or different ones? How to coordinate different mechanisms, and different parts of the national governance machinery dealing with different aspects or kinds of IG issues? - How to ensure meaningful participation of all stakeholders in a manner that focuses on public interest?- How can the surplus from domain name registration fees etc collected by national IG agencies be employed for public interest purposes, especially, for taking up Internet related research.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Organiser(s) Name:</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore - Civil SocietyBrazilian Internet Steering Committee - National level governance bodyInstitute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences - Academic InsitutionCentre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training (CCIRDT), Vancouver, BC CANADA - Civil Society Instituto NUPEF , Rio de Janeiro - Civil SocietyIT for Change, Bangalore - Civil Society.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Previous Workshop(s):</h3>
<p>See in the workshops section in IGF 2011IG4D Workshop 183: A Possible Framework for Global Net Neutrality.</p>
<h3>Submitted Workshop Panelists:</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Carlos Afonso, Insituto NUPEF, Board Member, Brazilian Steering CommiteeEmily Taylor, Independent Consultant, Formerly with NOMINETAlice Munya, Chairperson, Kenya Internet Steering CommiteeVictor Tishchenko, Institute of Advanced Systems, Russian Academy of Sciences,Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society,Moderator, Micheal Gurstein, Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training, Canada.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Name of Remote Moderator(s):</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ginger Paque</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Read the original published on the IGF website <a class="external-link" href="http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/w2012/proposals">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/national-ig-mechanisms'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/national-ig-mechanisms</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaEvent TypeWorkshopInternet Governance2012-12-09T00:50:46ZEventHabits of Living Thinkathon — Day 4 Live Blog: Namita A Malhotra on Amateur Pornography
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-amateur-photography
<b>The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multi-disciplinary scholars and practitioners. The aim of the workshop is to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and to produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We found <b>Namita Malhotra</b>’s presentation on amateur video porn to be particularly stimulating. However, she begins her discussion not with porn but with the Sumeet Mixie, the first mixie made for Indian food. At the time that the Sumeet Mixie had its heyday, it was largely inaccessible to most Indians, even those in the mid-level middle class. The mixie, Namita claimed, was a representation of a crisis of the middle class in India in the 1980s, a representation of the progress that was promised to them through Nehru’s development programs that was still largely out of reach for the average Indian. Namita draws parallels between a picture of her father, a young engineer, with Nehru and the famous picture of Nehru with the Santhali tribal girl, who, at some point after the famous shot of her inaugurating a dam, placed a garland around Nehru and was subsequently ostracized from her village on the grounds that she had become married to him. Namita’s father’s life was also heavily influenced by Nehru and his call for engineers, as he was pressured to become an engineer when he had little interest in doing so.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Both the lives of her father and the Santhali girl were changed by the actions that they were asked to perform for the good of the country. Indians across the country were pushed to change their life, their dreams, and their habits in return for progress, for development, especially that of the Western kind. The reward was liberalization and a move towards consumerism, a duty that was placed upon the middle class as an activity of their earned progression but remained largely impossible. This struggle between the expectation to consume as a function of their hard-earned middle class status and their inability to do so was just one of many crises of the 1980s Indian middle class. Namita describes this period using two iconic phrases: “Life was hard and slow” and “a long afternoon of underdevelopment.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Moving on from discussions of Nehru and the middle class, Namita presents to us her work, jointly titled: Nehru’s Technologically Enabled Future or It Could Be Me. She enters into the discussion of amateur porn in India by showing us a 2-3 minutes video clip of the women’s section of a bus. The women are standing or sitting, and their activity barely changes over the period of the video. The eroticism, she suggests, could be in the suggestion of activities that could take place. It is the seemingly non-erotic images in India that have become some of the most defining features of amateur porn in India, both currently and in the past.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In past decades, the consumption of porn largely took place in communal male spaces. However, the event of a somewhat non-erotic clip of a teenage couple negotiating the terms of oral sex being auctioned on a website led to what Namita calls a “moment of sexual eureka”: the realization that amateur clips could be shared online. This led to a flood of amateur porn being circulated and shared through online networks. This eventually prompted a response from the state, though the response was largely one of confusion towards who or what was really responsible—the individual, the network or the technology? The state, of course, is not afraid of the content of the clips but the networks and connections that they cannot see nor trace.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Namita then moves on to a discussion of content of much amateur Indian porn. Much of the media that is created and consumed on mobile phones is grainy and low resolution, and even higher-resolution image clips tend to be highly un-staged with little to no focus on performance. There is a creation of anonymity through the way many clips are filmed, with one participant holding the camera and focuses being placed on body parts instead of faces. Where, then, does the eroticism come from? Namita argues that the familiarity and ability to relate and be present as a viewer in these amateur videos creates its own eroticism. The same can be said about the realness of videos whose purpose is not performance of sexual acts by ideal bodies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This creation of eroticism indicates possible discussion of surrogacy. Erotica stands in for sex, masturbation stands in for sex, etc. Surrogacy may be useful in completing this conversation about eroticism and Indian amateur porn.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants were unsure about the connection between Nehru’s paradigms and amateur porn, and felt that it needed a bit more fleshing out. Discussion then moved towards ideas of transgressive epistemologies, and whether or not the culture and networks situated around amateur porn where sites of transgressive practices. There was debate around what the purpose of the transgression is—recovering ground in visual culture? Gaining control over one’s corporeality? Ultimately, Namita was wary of invoking a transgressive framework around these cultures, and put forth pleasure as a more interesting and useful frame, as there is always a sexual layer involved. She felt that a transfessive framework may be limiting in the exploration of these cultures.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-amateur-photography'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-amateur-photography</a>
</p>
No publisherJadine LannonLive BlogThinkathonHabits of LivingDigital HumanitiesWorkshop2012-10-09T06:23:05ZBlog EntryHabits of Living Thinkathon — Day 4 Live Blog: Wendy Chun on Friends
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-wendy-chun-on-friends
<b>The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multi-disciplinary scholars and practitioners. The aim of the workshop is to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and to produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Wendy Chun</b> talked to us today about what it means to be a friend. She began with a brief overview of network theory, with a focus on the dilemmas of the constant mapping. Moving on, she asked us to think about how networks are related to habits, as habits focus us on the duration of events. This is important for the understanding of networks, as networks require the constant generation of associated events that seem stable. Wendy then asked us to think about the difference between communities and networks, and helped us to think about the extent that networks are imagined (in Benedict Anderson’s sense of the imagined). Throughout this discussion, she continues to come back to the theme of “you,” the idea that networks enable us not only to see ourselves and our place in relation to other nodes in the network, but that simultaneous access of a network, a moment of “we,” will actually cause the network to fall into crisis,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Using this “you” framework, Wendy moves onto a discussion of the internet and how it has moved from being seen as a anonymous free space to a semi-private space where freedom stems from private authentication by others in your network. It is at this point that she asks us how we understand the idea of “friend”; are friendships mutual bonds created for support in times of crisis, or are they sometimes one-way affections where the act of requesting friendship creates the connection? How much has friendship become about broadcasting our connections—our place in the network?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cyber friendship, especially in the Facebook understanding of “friend,” becomes a method that we can use to understand our strange relationship with safety on online spaces—we desire security, and want to trust and authenticate our relationships with friends, but by pursuing this we can often put our friends into danger, or at least into realms that may not always be seen as “safe”, which now is often interpreted as “private.” For example, by “liking” a friend’s link on Facebook, we create tangible information for Facebook to collect and use about both our friends and ourselves. This method of capturing data only works when you are enmeshed in a network of friends. If our need for safety/privacy is what places in danger on the Internet, it is not security that tames networks by personalizing them that will help us; instead, we need to understand and accept that intimacy and danger in online spaces go hand-in-hand.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As a finishing note, Wendy describes to us a phishing attack that she suffered. After clicking a link sent to her by a friend on Facebook, she sent phishing spam to all of her friends—all of the members of her network. This event created a moment of understanding for her, as she realized that her spam messages reminded her friends that they were part of her network, and that she liked them enough to put them at risk.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participant discussion began with a focus on how theory becomes implicated into networks, and how networks can be used to give oversights of theory. Participants asked: what does theorizing networks do to the networks, and the members in the networks? Can Facebook be seen as theory, particularly in the ideas of the existence of events without witnesses and how friendships are created and understood?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants also pointed out that it is wrong to be suspicious of organizations like Facebook, because it is not Facebook that betrays you but your friends. This is the implicit agreement of Facebook friendship—the agreement to be friends implicates the transmission of secrecy/vulnerability. Machines cannot betray, but humans, friends, can and often do, even in ways that may be involuntary.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Further discussion focused on both how friendships and application suggestions give us the ability to understand how we are building and presenting ourselves. This two-way communication with technologies that implicate networks puts us into a state of permanent crisis where we must continue to be active to connect, as connecting becomes the main activity of becoming and staying networked. This moved into a discussion on the creation of traces of networks that are constantly in motion, and constantly on the verge of disappearing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Wendy’s discussion of friendship as an often one-way activity, particularly on Facebook where one member must request friendship with another, was a completely new way of thinking about the essence of friendship for me. How much does this cyber, “Facebook” method of creating friendship through the declaration of association cut into the real world? Are nonhuman agreements of friendship (i.e.: Facebook friends) reflections of significant real-world events, in the sense that they are often a nonhuman promise to pursue future friendship in the physical world that is made real through its broadcast on the network? What does this mean for real-world meetings that don’t cumulate in “friending”? What happens to the structure of real-world friendship if the promise of friendship that was broadcasted is never followed through? What does “defriending” mean? What does defriending do to networks?</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-wendy-chun-on-friends'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-wendy-chun-on-friends</a>
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No publisherJadine LannonLive BlogThinkathonHabits of LivingDigital HumanitiesWorkshop2012-10-09T06:18:59ZBlog EntryHabits of Living Thinkathon — Day 4 Live Blog: Finding and Funding the Masses
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-finding-and-funding-the-masses
<b>The Habits of Living Thinkathon (Thinking Marathon) is being hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, from September 26 to 29, 2012. The event brings together a range of multi-disciplinary scholars and practitioners. The aim of the workshop is to generate a dialogue on the notion of surrogate structures that have become visible landmarks of contemporary life, and to produce new conceptual frameworks to help us understand networks and the ways in which they inform our everyday practice and thought. </b>
<p class="p1" style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant Shah of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore began the final day of the THinkathon with his presentation “Citizen action in the time of the network: beyond spectacles of change.” Nishant begins by describing the climate of the current digital moment. We are dealing with unprecedented questions of territory. Democratic states are facing resistance with their promising notes for the future. With increasingly queer boundaries between ‘citizen’ and ‘State’ mediated by digital relations, we are looking at a radical re-imagining of the role of the State and its sovereignty.</p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align: justify; ">These past few years – in the midst of the Arab Spring – we’ve heard a lot about the <i>new</i> era of digital activism. Shah is interested in pinpointing what is actually ‘new’ about this activism. He begins with a bold assertion: this newness is indicative of new forms of citizen action, but not necessarily <i>new infrastructures</i> of activism. Shah argues that what is actually ‘new’ about this activism is that these digital technologies present an imperative that (activist) events be rendered intelligible and accessible within their paradigms. These technologies presume that a legible and intelligible network exists, despite temporal and geographical differences. What becomes evident is that the system makes invisible those actions that cannot be interpreted by the system – they only recognise actions that can be accounted for by the system. The study of networks presents a problematic proposition because of its self-referential network – any phenomenon is explained only through its relationality with other phenomena. To illustrate this, Shah presents the provocative question: “If a tree falls in a lonely forest and nobody tweets about it, has it really fallen?” The very acts of witnessing have been replaced by tools of networking.</p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align: justify; ">Shah roots his epistemology within a case study of the Shanzhai Spring Festival Gala in China. He shows how discourse around this event has marked it as a ‘failed’ event and representative of how there can be no citizen action within authoritarian contexts. Shah suggests that another way of looking at this event is a phenomenon which cannot be accounted for by the network – a radical critique presented by activists that cannot be rendered intelligible by the current system. This raises a larger anxiety for Shah and the participants: if events do not become accessible it always gets counted as a failure and gets lost in public memory.</p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align: justify; ">Shah’s presentation raised vibrant discussion on the politics of visibility, knowing, and the avante-garde. Participants suggested that Nishant look into the work of artists and theorists like Ariella Azoulay who attempt to conceptualise actions outside of the paradigm of rights, citizenship, and propriety. What does it mean to do in action <i>knowing</i> that it will be shut down – a politics of despair, if you will. What also becomes apparent is the <i>limits</i> of revolution – there has not been a transformation of a system. Rather, the system has included more citizens into its fold. The conversation reveals that we need to find a more critical way to discuss networks – a language in which the network is not clichéd, but rather porous.</p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align: justify; ">Renée Ridgway from NEWS Amsterdam follow’s Shah’s presentation with her presentation “Surrogacy: Bodies, States, Networks: Crowdfunding for funding the crowds, a new model for the distribution of wealth?” Ridgway takes a departure from other presentations by directly implicated the participants in one of her current art projects. Ridgway reviews one of her current research-art projects on documenting indigenous plants in Kochin Kerela – a location with histories of Dutch colonialism. Ridgway has visited and exhibited in Kerela in the past and is now interested in expanding on her work and developing a documentary about these issues. She asks the participants: how does she fund this project without the State?</p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align: justify; ">In rooting questions of State reparation, (neo)colonialism, race, and other central political questions within a tangible project – Ridgway invites the crowd into critical discussion. Participants remain wary of the way in which technology can serve as a ‘trojan horse’ to build collaboration with communities. What becomes apparent is that Ridgway, as an artist, has become a surrogate for the State for the people she worked with on the project in India. Questions of collaboration remained central to this discussion – how do we imagine collaboration as a condition of care by the network, one that requires investment and material labour to perform a particular task. Also, questions of neoliberalism emerged. What is a collective process that relies on affective and material labour by diverse peoples becomes lost in the narrative of ‘individual’ artist.</p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align: justify; ">I share participants concern that we complicate the role of an artist. What becomes apparent is that dynamics of class, race, and (neo)colonilism can manifest themselves in the technological realm. While I agree that technology can present a compelling platform to explore solidarities and collaborations across difference, it can simultaneously function as a site that reifies these oppressions.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-finding-and-funding-the-masses'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living-day-4-finding-and-funding-the-masses</a>
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No publisheralokLive BlogThinkathonHabits of LivingDigital HumanitiesWorkshop2012-10-09T06:55:50ZBlog Entry